Circles of Life: Twenty-Five Years of Epcot Center
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Not confined to Future World attractions, Eric worked on country pavilions Mexico and Germany and returned to working with figures of the �real� world that always required that little extra effort.
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AT the opening of this article there is a stylized map of the park based on a Garden City ideal drawing by Ebenzer Howard, which fixes Epcot Center between 1989 and 1993. This period is in effect the completion of the Epcot Center ideal as the park was originally conceived. Spread across a seven year expansion (Journey Into Imagination, January 1983; Horizons, October 1983; Morocco, September 1984; The Living Seas, January 1986 and Norway, May 1988) this ideal would be finalized in 1989 which saw the last of the Future World narratives to open. A �Life & Health� concept had been on and off the drawing boards prior to 1982. When it opened as Wonders of Life this changed the familiar ride-through experience that could be found in its west-side neighbors and Spaceship Earth though this was not always the case as Eric recalls: �Life & Health was originally going to have a dimensional ride-through the human body and we did a lot of big mock-ups of blood capillaries and lungs. We hired a couple of medical model designers who worked with Frank Armitage on that for quite some time, it was more like the movie Fantastic Voyage.�
The pavilion would also usher in the use of celebrity to assist in getting the message across, with the presence of Saturday Night Live personalities in Cranium Command and Martin Short in The Making of Me. The �celebrity� approach can be seen as giving guests increased access to a subject as they already have an �in� through recognition without simply being a star vehicle like the Magic Journey�s replacement Captain Eo was for Michael Jackson. Kitchen Kabaret at The Land which explored the value of understanding nutrition through the use of songs performed by a band of fruit and vegetables were replaced by 1994�s Food Rocks with the information being delivered by contemporary �rock stars� such as Pita Gabriel and The Peach Boys. In 1996 when Ellen DeGeneres took the role of the guide to understanding energy in the lighter and entertaining Ellen�s Energy Adventure, it was perfect Disney synergy in action as the ABC sitcom Ellen was hugely popular during the mid-90�s.
I never experienced the complete Epcot Center story as that first visit put me in Epcot �94 on the day that CommuniCore�s replacement Innoventions opened. Of course it was clear then that the linear narratives of the 1964 -�65 World�s Fair model were at the point of running their course and I would only take one trip through the Universe of Energy and World of Motion before my return two years later.
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With there being an inherent relationship between the World�s Fair and Disneyland�s Tomorrowland then naturally that relationship would be extended to Florida�s Tomorrowland. Yet the space afforded to the imagineers dealing with Walt Disney World meant they could eventually adopt a different approach.
�The themes of the Magic Kingdom have essentially grown out to the other parks in Florida. Future World has really replaced Tomorrowland, which has allowed us to make that Tomorrowland much more fantasy/science-fiction based. Disneyland�s Tomorrowland has Innoventions from Future World which adds the �reality stories� to the �fantasy stories� there,� Eric surmises.
The most apparent association to the Fair through this line came with Horizons, often cited as the sequel to the Carousel of Progress. That the Carousel would be removed from California�s Tomorrowland in 1973 to take its� third (and longest) residency in Florida�s Tomorrowland from 1975 showed that this linear narrative still had some future to it. Horizons presented a �bigger� tomorrow (though not necessarily more beautiful) with the Carousel family one generation older. When Horizons closed in early 1999 (it had a three year stay of execution due to the delay in the opening of Test Track) its� �futures� had lived a considerable number of years less than those found in the Carousel.